Earth to echo
Tuck, Munch and Alex are a trio of inseparable friends whose lives are about to change. Their Las Vegas suburb is being destroyed by a highway construction project that is forcing their families to move away. They mourn what will surely be the end of their happiness and friendship, as their families go separate ends of the country. During the last week in their neighborhood, Alex's phone, as well as his family's, begin "barfing" displaying weird electronic signals. Munch and Tuck figure out these signals only start at a certain point in the neighborhood. At one point men from the construction crew come to give out new phones, apologizing for the apparent electrical short that caused this. The boys hide their phones. Munch discovers that the image on his phone is identical to a desert 17 miles from the boys. While at school they plan to tell their parents they are sleeping out and ride their bikes to find what the image means. Tuck in a spurt of bravery asks hot girl Emma out but settles for a blank piece of paper to trick his friends into believing that he got her number. That night, Tuck and Alex collect an extremely nervous Munch who has very cold feet. After some convincing they get him to come, telling him its their last night together before Alex, and eventually all three, move. What they discover is something beyond their wildest imaginations: a small friendly alien robot who has become stranded on Earth. In need of their help, the three friends come together to protect the alien, which they name Echo. They travel all over the desert, into a pawn shop, into a house that happens to be Emma's (or, as Munch calls her, "Mannequin Girl") who joins them to get away from her parents, a bar, and into an arcade, trying to find missing parts to help Echo rebuild his spaceship. However, they are being chased down by government officials, who have gone undercover as construction workers to investigate a spaceship that entered Earth's atmosphere near the construction site. They shot him down and plan to kill him. They believe if Echo rebuilds his ship it will kill everyone on Earth. After collecting a few of the pieces, the kids and Echo are caught, and the government almost kills Echo before they escape and steal the government's van to follow the last map on their phones, which leads to the spaceship. The map leads them to Alex's backyard. It turns out that it was under the neighborhood all along, and after Alex puts Echo in the spaceship and tearfully says goodbye, the spaceship rebuilds itself by pulling each piece up out of the ground and blasts off into the sky. No one other than the four kids are around to see it (except Munch's mother, who no ones believes) and think the holes appear because of a short earthquake that was really caused by the ship taking off. The government officials leave (having been wrong about what they believed what would happened) with no harm done to the children. The kids' parents discover that they were out all night and they end up in serious trouble. However, while they saved their neighborhood, Alex and Munch still end up having to move while Tuck is able to stay but says it isn't the same. Despite this, the group realizes that real best friends remain so despite whatever distance they are to each other and remain friends for life. The movie ends with the four friends meeting again on a camping trip and getting a signal from Echo's home planet.